OpenTF Sticks a Fork in Terraform  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source]] - Full Title: OpenTF Sticks a Fork in Terraform - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/fc5fc666-eb9f-44a7-a5b3-69de515ef0cc ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **OpenTF Forks Terraform** - HashiCorp hasn't reversed Terraform's license change, prompting OpenTF to fork the project. - OpenTF joined the Linux Foundation, aiming to ensure the tool remains open-source and vendor-neutral. Transcript: Jerod Santo News. When we covered the OpenTF manifesto last week, I said the group's goal is to ensure Terraform stays truly open stores forever and they're asking HashiCorp to switch the license back. Well, according to OpenTF, there has been no indication by HashiCorp that they plan to revert the license so they moved forward with the fork and they filled out all the paperwork necessary To join the Linux Foundation. Quote, we completed all documents required for OpenTF to become part of the Linux Foundation with the end goal of having OpenTF as part of the cloud native computing foundation. By making a foundation responsible for the project, we will ensure the tool stays truly open source and vendor neutral. To me, this is the open source community doing exactly what it is best, stepping up and taking action to fill a void for and by the community that relies upon a project. And if you're wondering about the sustainability story for this fork, here's a note from the FAQ. Quote, so far, four companies pledged the equivalent of 14 full-time engineers to the OpenTF initiative. We expect this number to at least double in the following few weeks. To give you some perspective, Terraform was effectively maintained by about five full-time employees from HashiCorp in the last two years. ([Time 0:00:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/032d6635-09bf-438f-8ae2-ec4cbe0b850f)) - **Meta's CodeLlama** - Meta released CodeLlama, a code-generating LLM in various sizes and specializations. - It outperforms other public LLMs, claims Meta, with an open license similar to Llama 2. Transcript: Jerod Santo If you don't believe us, look at the repo. You can add meta's code llama to the ever expanding list of code generating LLMs. Based on llama 2, code llama comes in three sizes, 7 billion parameters, 13 billion and 34 billion. And it comes in three different varieties, a general model, one tuned for NLP instructions and one fine tuned for Python. How does it stack up? Well, meta claims it outperforms other publicly available LLMs and it shares the same open-ish license as llama itself, which is free for research and commercial use unless you compete With meta. ([Time 0:02:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/14b3df88-0244-43d5-9315-b902c6aa3bdf)) - **Default Values Stick** - Thinkst's Paul Gichuki found that users often default to example values in configurations. - Using "some prefix" as a default subdomain resulted in many users literally using "some prefix". Transcript: Jerod Santo Sounds like Matt is confident that WordPress.com's gonna be around for a while. Paul Juchee from Thinkest recently bumped into something in their product design that made them rethink their use of examples. In a DNS configuration setting, they used the string SUM prefix as a default subdomain, which was meant to instruct their users to pick a prefix for their subdomain. Can you guess what happened next? Two out of every five people chose SUM prefix, like the literal string SUM prefix, for their subdomain. Here's what they learned through that process. Quote, this is not an individual customer problem. Looking at other configuration options present in our UI, the pattern is clear. When given an example, a significant number of users default to using that same example in their customization. The behavior is consistent across customers and configurations. This surprised us. For this particular case, their plan is to show multiple prefix examples to the user so it's clear that you need to select one. The bigger picture takeaway though is this. Quote, what seemed like a very minor placeholder choice we made years ago had an outsized impact and helped us to reevaluate how we select the examples that we show our customers. ([Time 0:04:38](https://share.snipd.com/snip/05a30350-36f6-4ee4-a4b3-e388fc6e0c1a)) - **Rust for Web Development** - Consider Rust for web development for its efficiency, performance, and maintainability. - Rust's type system offers reliability and its speed boosts performance. Transcript: Jerod Santo It's a strong reminder that sweating every small detail in the UI, we were surprised at the oversized effect of our examples. End quote. I'm reminded of the old meme where you tell someone to press any key to continue and they scour their keyboard searching for the any key. Something to think about this week while you're out there picking defaults and examples for your software projects. Marco, Ott, WIT and his team at Main Matter have been investing heavily in Rust for web development and in the linked post, he shares why they're so confident making that investment And why he believes that Rust has a great future ahead of it in the web and cloud space. Quote, what could motivate a team that already uses Ruby, Java, Elixir, TypeScript, Go or whatever else to adopt Rust? There are two key aspects that make Rust a great choice for building for the web. One, its efficiency and performance and two, the reliability and maintainability gains brought by its type system. Marco explains each of those bullet points in detail and goes on to describe how and where he thinks Rust fits best in the web ([Time 0:06:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/81ce607d-8cb5-4014-ace3-8f7ef5d29ab7))